Venatrix Reviews

I love digging into niche, low-budget, strange games — especially if they fall into the horror or survival horror genre — just to see if there's something special hidden inside. Sometimes these games turn out to be surprisingly great, sometimes they’re hilariously bad (intentionally or not), and sometimes they at least offer something unusual in their narrative or atmosphere. But most of the time... they’re just bad. And yes, I saw the screenshots and promo material for Venatrix and bought it fully expecting a "so bad it's good" experience. At first, in the opening location, the house I thought, "Okay, it’s the usual untweaked UE5 movement and camera, but visually, it’s not that bad." However, things went downhill quickly. Right after a painfully stupid series of fetch quests around the house — where you have to talk to various NPCs — I noticed glaring issues like desynchronized voiceovers and subtitles (sometimes the voice actors even skip entire lines of dialogue, lol). Then I found an unintentionally hilarious "secret lever" in the maiden’s room that opens a door to the house’s basement. And that's where the real decline begins — literally and figuratively. The game introduces its combat system, and you’re thrown into a boring sewer level (why a sewer?) filled with braindead AI enemies, bland design, and absolutely terrible sound design. Enemies do make sounds, but hilariously, the source of the sound is not from the enemies themselves — it’s coming directly to your headphones, no matter where the enemies actually are. After that, there's a combat section with zombie maidens, who use what seems like the default zombie animation, in a "corrupted" version of the house. Then... it gets even worse: huge open areas around an asylum (yep, truly a creative choice!) filled with even more braindead cultists. At this point, I also noticed the game likes to strip you of your shotgun and extra revolver bullets at the start of every new location, forcing you to scavenge for loot again. And the cultists? They are so loud it’s genuinely unbearable. I should mention: I played only as the male character, who is focused on combat encounters. I didn’t even dare to try playing as the female character, who supposedly focuses on stealth gameplay — after experiencing the quality of the combat sections, I just couldn't bring myself to do it. At this point, I told myself, [strike] what a wonderful world [/strike] it’s time to stop. Sorry, but Venatrix isn’t even "so bad it’s funny" — it’s just a bad, poorly made game.